The CFR report and accompanying map (click for interactive version) is
based on the assessment of approximately 1,200 government officials,
foreign policy experts, and academics. Risk events are rated for
likelihood and impact, with high impact events directly threatening the
U.S. homeland, likely to trigger U.S. military involvement, or
threatening the supply of critical U.S. strategic resources.

Below are the top ten threats threats, starting with the worst, with links to CFR's analysis for more information:

Strengthening of al-Qaeda in the Arabian PeninsulaHigh likelihood; moderate impact.The Arabian
Peninsula is considered the "most dangerous al-Qaeda affiliate" to U.S.
national security with more than two dozen U.S. diplomatic facilities in
the area have shut down because of terrorist threats. In response, the
United States will continue to escalate its drone counterterrorism
campaign.

Political Instability in JordanHigh likelihood; moderate impact.Jordan’s political
stability and economy is severely threatened by the influx of Syrian
and Palestinian refugees. The United Nations has estimated that Jordan
will need $5.3 billion by the end of 2014 for its refugee crisis.

Sectarian Violence in IraqHigh likelihood; moderate impact.According to the
CFR, if sectarian violence continues, Iraq may plunge into a "deeper
state of chaos" and potentially into civil war.

Rising Security Threats in PakistanHigh likelihood; moderate impact.
The withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces from Afghanistan after 2014
could increase instability by allowing anti-state militants from
Pakistan to establish a terrorist safe haven in Afghanistan.

Increased Violence and Instability in AfghanistanHigh likelihood; moderate impact.
Failure to sign a security pact could undermine U.S. and allied forces
efforts to improve the security environment of Afghanistan. The
reestablishment of al-Qaeda groups throughout Afghanistan is one
possibility if agreements are not met.

Terrorist Attack on the U.S. HomelandModerate likelihood; high impact.
Another attack on the scale of 9/11 is "plausible," according to CFR,
with the White House warning that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
"poses the greatest potential threat."

Iranian Nuclear CrisisModerate likelihood; high impact.The
prospects for a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff with Iran have
recently improved. A lasting settlement of the dispute is still
uncertain and even "the possibility of military strikes cannot be
discounted," according to the CFR.

North Korean Crisis
Moderate likelihood; high impact.The risk of conflict
on the Korean peninsula remains high since there are continuous efforts
by North Korea to develop nuclear weapons and long range missiles
against UN Security Council resolutions. The execution of North Korean
leader Kim Jong Un’s uncle following charges of treason has increased
the potential for political instability and unrest in the country.

Civil War in Syria
Moderate likelihood; high impact.According to the CFR,
ongoing civil strife threatens the stability of U.S. allies,
particularly Turkey and Jordan. Increased regional instability could
create another safe haven for extremist groups active in Syria, like
al-Qaeda affiliates, Islamic State of Iraq, and Hezbollah.

Cyberattack on U.S. Infrastructure
Moderate likelihood; high impact.Due to the
increasingly sophisticated nature of cyberattacks, such an attack on
critical infrastructure could be significantly disruptive or potentially
devastating. Energy is the most vulnerable industry, and therefore a
large-scale attack could temporarily halt the supply of water,
electricity, gas, transportation, communication, and financial
institutions.

When Will America End Cash-for-Visas Racket?

Michelle Malkin

2/28/2014 12:01:00 AM - Michelle Malkin

This may be the first and last time I ever write these words: America, follow Canada.
Our neighbors to the north finally have wised up to the international
cash-for-visas scam. Last week, the country ended its foreign investor
program that put residency up for sale to the highest bidder. We should
have done the same a long time ago.
Canada's Immigrant Investor Program granted permanent residency to
wealthy foreigners who forked over 800,000 Canadian dollars for a
five-year, zero-interest loan to one of the country's provinces. The
scheme turned out to be a magnet for tens of thousands of millionaires
from Hong Kong and China. But as the Canadian Ministry of Finance
concluded in its annual budget report this year, the program
"undervalued Canadian permanent residence" and showed "little evidence
that immigrant investors as a class are maintaining ties to Canada or
making a positive economic contribution to the country."
In several provinces, the foreign investor racket was riddled from top
to bottom with fraud. Whistleblowers in the Prince Edward Island
immigration office exposed rampant bribery among bureaucrats and
consultants, who helped their clients jump the queue. The government
failed to monitor immigrant investors or verify the promised economic
benefits of the "investments." The program didn't just fast-track
supposed business people with dubious business backgrounds, but also
their entire extended families, who walled themselves in segregated
neighborhoods.
Ads in Dubai bragged that investors didn't even need to live in the
country to take advantage of the citizenship-for-sale deal -- and that
their dependents could avail themselves of full health care and
education benefits.
Fifteen years ago, an independent auditor hired by the Canadian
government warned that he had "found that in many cases there was no
investment at all or that the amount of that investment was grossly
inflated." The auditor nailed the expedient commodification of
citizenship: "Canadians gave up something of real value -- a visa or
passport -- and received very little in return." He concluded: "A lot of
people made a lot of money, mostly lawyers and immigration consultants
who set up these bogus investments. It's a massive sham. The middlemen
made hundreds of millions of dollars."
I've been issuing the very same warnings about America's EB-5 immigrant
investor visa program, created under an obscure section of the 1990
Immigration Act, for more than a decade. The details of the U.S. program
vary, but the facade is the same: trading residency on the cheap for
the shady promise of economic development. Just as in Canada, the U.S.
racket's alleged economic benefits are largely hype.
Who has profited? As I've reported previously, the real winners are
former federal immigration officials who formed lucrative limited
partnerships to cash in on their access and politically connected
cronies. An internal U.S. Justice Department investigative report
revealed years ago that "aliens were paying $125K" instead of the
required $500,000 to $1 million minimum, and "almost all of the monies
went to the general partners and the companies who set up the limited
partners."
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has been pressing EB-5 middlemen who operate a
network of regional centers to cough up data on how many jobs these
immigrant investor schemes are creating, lists of current and former
corporate officers at the centers, and details of consulting services
and other contracts into which the centers have entered. Where's the
rest of Capitol Hill?
Just as in Canada, American whistleblowers also have been raising red
flags for years. Most recently, immigration officials in Laguna Niguel,
Calif., last fall spilled the beans on how they "often rushed or skipped
altogether economic reviews of applicants to the EB-5 visa program."
They did so under orders from senior managers pandering to wealthy and
politically connected foreign applicants. The Department of Homeland
Security Inspector General is investigating government retaliation
against employees who reported the misconduct. "In essence," Sen.
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, noted in a public letter, "high-level
officials in the (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau) are
accused of creating an environment hostile to those who insist on
following the law."
That fish rots right down from the head of USCIS, Alejandro Mayorkas,
who was confirmed for the job in December -- despite remaining under
investigation by the DHS Inspector General for his alleged role in
intervening on behalf of GreenTech, a crony company with ties to
Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Hillary Clinton's other
brother, Anthony. The alleged scam involved special treatment to the
company, which wanted special treatment and EB-5 visas for, you guessed
it, deep-pocketed Chinese investors.
Recklessly peddling foreign investor visas for the precious privilege
of entry into our country is bad for our sovereignty, bad for workers
and good for corruptocrats. Moreover, history shows that government is always bad at picking economic winners and losers. If Canada can come to its senses on this, why not America?

21st-Century Politics: A Minus-Sum Game Where Everybody Loses

Scott Rasmussen

2/28/2014 12:01:00 AM - Scott Rasmussen

"A simple recipe for violence: promise a lot, deliver a
little. Lead people to believe they will be much better off, but let
there be no dramatic improvement." The brilliant political scientist
Aaron Wildavsky wrote these words in 1968 while America was engulfed in
race riots and anti-war protests. Sadly, his words from long ago eerily
describe the politics of 21st-century America.
President Barack Obama and his recent predecessors have been good about promising a lot but delivering little.
The current crusade to raise the minimum wage is a perfect example.
Regardless of whether or not it makes sense, the impact doesn't measure
up to the problems it is supposed to solve.
Will it help reduce poverty? Perhaps a bit. The Congressional Budget
Office estimates it will lift 900,000 people out of poverty over the
course of a few years. But the government says nearly 50 million people
are officially living in poverty. So, raising the minimum wage might
help about 2 percent of the poor move from just below the poverty line
to just above it. And the people it helps are not the ones who need it
most. The poorest of the poor lack jobs of any kind.
Back in 1968, Wildavsky said such symbolic political gestures create
"minus-sum games in which every player leaves the contest worse off than
when he entered." In the case of the minimum wage, Obama could fail to
accomplish his goal and disappoint his base. However, when symbolic
issues pass, it can be even worse because "it soon becomes clear that
nothing has changed."
Minus-sum games are the norm in American politics today. Issues are
raised, and symbolic solutions are proposed. If the proposed solution
doesn't get passed, the losing team gets angry. If it does get passed,
nothing changes.
The problem of promising a lot and delivering little is especially true
of the president's health care law. Symbolically, it was supposed to
insure the uninsured, reduce costs for everyone else, and improve
service. There were no downsides in the symbolic version of the plan. If
you liked your insurance or your doctor, you were told you could keep
it.
Now that the law has passed, the reality doesn't measure up. Even those
who have experienced little disruption are disappointed solely because
the promises were much loftier. The president led people to believe they
would be better off, and they're not. Not surprisingly, national
frustration with the law is growing daily.
Obama, of course, is not alone in this approach. Republicans do it,
too. They continually rail against government spending but fail to
propose anything more than symbolic gestures to slow down the growth.
The core problem is that both political parties in Washington promise
that the federal government can fix every problem. But the truth is it
can't. To solve the challenges before our nation, we need an all-hands
approach that unleashes the creativity and resources of individual
Americans, community groups, churches, small businesses, state and local
governments, and more.
This will certainly mean a smaller role for the federal government, but
it will put the problem-solving responsibility where it belongs -- with
the American people.

By Robert HaddickThe National InterestThe
Obama administration may have finally lost its patience with China’s
salami-slicing in the East and South China Seas. Remarks over the past
few weeks from administration officials show a tougher line and may
foreshadow “red lines” to ward off further Chinese encroachments. These
developments may show a White House increasingly ready to abandon a
previous policy of forbearance toward China. It could also mean an
impending tilt away from explicit U.S. neutrality toward the many
territorial disputes in both seas. Given China’s stepped-up
assertiveness, the drawing of red lines seems inevitable. The next
question though is whether the U.S. will be able to back up these red
lines with convincing military power. China’s military modernization
program has long anticipated this move, leaving the answer anything but
clear.
Heretofore, the U.S. has pursued a policy of forbearance with China,
with the hope that by going out its way to show respect for China’s
emerging great power status, Washington would avoid a ruinous security
competition. In remarks at a Washington, D.C. think-tank in January
2014, Kurt Campbell, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs during President Obama’s first term, explained
the administration’s theory. According to Campbell, previous historical
examples of rising powers clashing with established powers were
typically the result of insufficient respect being paid to the rising
power (see 55:00 in). In the case of China, Campbell explained that the
Obama administration would not repeat that mistake. In her first speech
on Asia as President Obama’s new National Security Advisor, Susan Rice
mimicked China’s call for “a new model of major power relations” between
the U.S. and China and then recited a long list of issues on which she
hoped the two countries would cooperate. Rice made no mention of China’s
2012 takeover of Scarborough Reef from the Philippines or China’s
establishment that same year of a government headquarters and military
garrison on Woody Island in the Paracel island group, which China seized
from Vietnam in 1974. Three days after Rice’s speech, China declared an
air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea.
In alignment with the China forbearance policy is the U.S.
declaration of neutrality regarding the long list of territorial
disputes over islands, rocks, and reefs in the East and South China
Seas. In a speech on June 1, 2013 to the Shangri-la Dialogue conference
of regional defense ministers in Singapore, U.S. defense secretary Chuck
Hagel repeated America’s long-standing position that, “we do not take a
position on the question of sovereignty in these cases,” only that the
U.S. opposes the use of coercion to alter the status quo. This U.S.
position has served two purposes. It has allowed the U.S. to avoid
writing a blank check to a hypothetically reckless ally, one that could
theoretically entrap the U.S. in an unwanted conflict. Second, it
supported the forbearance policy by providing U.S. policymakers with a
convenient talking point whenever territorial squabbles in the region
flared up.
The policies of forbearance and neutrality could not survive if China
continued its salami-slicing march across the region. China’s
declaration of the East China Sea ADIZ, its continued siege of a tiny
Filipino marine garrison on Ayungin Island in the Spratly chain
(emotionally described in a long New York Times Magazine essay), and
China’s January 2014 edict requiring fishermen in the South China Sea
(including in waters far beyond China’s exclusive economic zone) to
obtain fishing permits from China may have finally convinced Obama
administration officials that the forbearance policy was a failure.
Perhaps most worrying for Washington is the nationalistic reaction to
these developments in Japan, which is a sign of declining confidence in
the U.S. security guarantee and which threatens a loss of U.S. control
over events in the region.
A rapid series of recent pronouncements by Obama administration
officials may indicate that a new U.S. policy is now emerging. The
stiffer tone first appeared on January 31, 2014, when Evan Medeiros, the
senior director for Asian affairs on the U.S. National Security Council
(NSC), rejected the legitimacy of China’s East China Sea ADIZ and
warned that if China declared an ADIZ over the South China Sea, “that
would result in changes in [U.S.] presence and military posture in the
region.” In congressional testimony on February 5th, Daniel Russel, Kurt
Campbell’s replacement as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia
and Pacific Affairs, specifically and publicly rejected China’s use of
its “nine-dash line” as a legitimate basis for China’s territorial claim
in the South China Sea, the first time a senior U.S. official has
explicitly done so. Also a first for a senior U.S. official was Russel’s
cataloging of China’s serial encroachments against Philippine and
Vietnamese interests and territorial claims in recent years. On February
13, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, told
an audience at the Philippine National Defense College that the United
States would come to the aid of the Philippines in the case of a
hypothetical conflict with China over disputed claims in the South China
Sea. Finally, on a February 17th visit to Indonesia, U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry similarly listed China’s recent provocations and called
for the resolution of territorial claims based on existing
international law, another rebuke to China’s nine-dash line claim in the
South China Sea.
A tougher line against China may signal the end of restrained U.S.
forbearance. Under the previous policy, the administration hoped that a
welcoming and nonthreatening approach would induce China to accept the
international system that has benefited China so greatly over the past
three decades. Instead, China’s behavior since 2008 seems to have
interpreted U.S. restraint as weakness, an impression further catalyzed
in China by the 2008 financial crisis, the subsequent struggles of the
U.S. economy, and the budget wars in Washington that have shrunk
projected U.S. defense spending. Having not received the response from
Beijing that they had hoped for, the White House seems to have concluded
that it will need a tougher approach.
But if the U.S. draws red lines in the South China Sea, will it be able to back them up?
The “Asia Rebalance” strategy, announced more than two years ago, and
a U.S. pledge to station sixty percent of its naval and air power in
the Asia-Pacific theater, has not deterred China’s continued
salami-slicing. As the Obama administration was reminded in Syria,
policymakers should not draw red lines unless they can convince the
adversary that he has no chance to successfully challenge them.
NSC official Evan Medeiros’s pledge to further bolster U.S. military
forces in the region should China impose an ADIZ over the South China
Sea could be an empty threat—the U.S. has little, if any, reserve
military power to permanently commit to the region. For example, the
demand for the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier strike groups already
exceeds their availability, with standard deployment times expected to
rise from six months to eight or more to cope with current requests by
U.S. regional commanders. Demand for attack submarines similarly exceeds
availability, a condition that is expected to worsen in the future as
the U.S. submarine fleet shrinks.
Washington could increase the military’s allocation to the Pacific
beyond sixty percent by stripping resources from the Middle East and
elsewhere. But China’s access-denial military strategy, which employs
China’s rapidly expanding force of land-based missiles, aircraft, and
submarines against U.S. bases and surface ships in the Western Pacific,
makes this a risky idea and one that could perversely increase the
region’s military instability. The U.S. military’s air and naval power
is excessively concentrated in relatively short-range aircraft and
missiles. Positioning even more of these forces at forward bases that
are already vulnerable to China’s missiles will increase the risk to
U.S. forces and may do little to deter Chinese behavior. That would be a
stunning outcome to U.S. policymakers who have long counted on
possessing escalation dominance during crises.
It was inevitable that China’s continued salami-slicing in the East
and South China Seas would meet resistance. China’s declaration of an
ADIZ over the East China Sea last November along with subsequent actions
has apparently brought the Obama administration’s policy of restrained
forbearance toward China to an end. American red lines in the South
China Sea may come next. However, China’s two-decade military
modernization program, with its emphasis on missiles and submarines, has
anticipated such steps. With a shortage of long-range striking power
and other tools to offset China’s access-denial strategy, the United
States will have to take some unfamiliar risks to back up the coming red
lines. That the U.S. military will soon face such risks is an
indictment of the Pentagon’s strategy and procurement policies over the
past decade and more. Until those are fixed, U.S. policymakers will have
to hope that American naval and air power still retains its awesome
reputation, and that looming U.S. red lines will thus go unchallenged.
But how long that reputation will hold up in East Asia remains to be
seen.
Robert Haddick is an independent contractor at U.S. Special
Operations Command. He writes here in a personal capacity. In September
2014, U.S. Naval Institute Press will publish “Fire on the Water: China,
America, and the Future of the Pacific,” Haddick’s book on the rise of
China’s military power and U.S. strategy in East Asia.http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/getting-tough-the-south-china-sea-9946

A reshuffled Ukrainian Parliament
installed following a coup last week has voted to appoint Arseniy Yatsenyuk as
the new prime minister of the country. Yats, as Victoria Nuland, the
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the U.S. State
Department, called him, is a natural choice. He is a millionaire former banker
who served as economy minister, foreign minister and parliamentary speaker
before Yanukovych took office in 2010. He is a member of Yulie Tymoshenko’s
Fatherland Party. Prior to the revolution cooked up by the U. S.State Department
and executed by ultra-nationalist street thugs, Tymoshenko was incarcerated for
embezzlement and other crimes against the people of Ukraine. Now she will be
part of the installed government, same as she was after the last orchestrated
coup, the Orange Revolution. http://youtu.be/m0xMtXOilWY

Yats will deliver Ukraine to the
[Rothschild] international bankers. “Ukraine is on the brink of bankruptcy and
needs to be saved from collapse — Yatsenyuk has a strong economic background,”
Ariel Cohen, senior fellow at
the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, told Bloomberg on Wednesday. “Ukraine
faces difficult reforms but without them there won’t be a successful [Rothschild
moneychanger debt-slavery] future.”

Discussion with the IMF is crucial,
US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew [LOL!!!] said
earlier this week. In order to cinch the deal, the U.S. government will sweeten
the pot. Lew talked with the IMF boss, Christine Lagarde, about Ukraine as he
headed back from a globalist confab, the G-20 meeting in Sydney,
Australia.

“Secretary Lew informed Managing
Director Lagarde that he had spoken earlier in the day with Ukrainian leader
Arseniy Yatsenyuk and advised him of the broad support for an international
assistance [SIC] package centered on the IMF [“Austerity
package” that gives the Ukrainian people debt-slavery and the politician-whores
humongous bank accounts in the Cayman Islands!], as soon as the
transitional Ukrainian [Rothschild-puppet] government is fully established by
the Parliament,” MNI News reported on Monday.
“Secretary Lew [Rothschild agent] also noted that he had communicated to Mr.
Yatsenyuk the need to quickly begin implementing economic reforms and enter
discussions with the IMF following the establishment of the transitional
government.”

Ukraine’s story
is right out of the IMF playbook. The nation’s corrupt leaders past and present
– most notably Tymoshenko, who went to prison for corruption and wholesale
thievery – have enriched themselves at the expense of ordinary
Ukrainians.

“Ukraine at the dawn of independence
was among the ten most developed countries, and now it drags out a miserable
existence,” Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko said last
year. The nation’s leaders “signed a memorandum with the International Monetary
Fund to meet the requirements of the oligarchs [Same cult kicked out of Russia
by Vladimir Putin that saved the Russian Republic.], but on the other hand — to
timely pay the interest on the IMF loans and to raise the prices for gas and
electricity,” Symonenko said.

The Orange Revolution – initiated by
NED, IRI, Soros
and the CIA – installed a rogue’s gallery of self-seeking
sociopaths who further bankrupted a country already seriously debilitated by
corruption.

For the IMF and the financial elite
[City of London], Ukraine is nothing less than a tantalizing bounty. “Its
fertile black soil generated more than one-fourth of Soviet agricultural output,
and its farms provided substantial quantities of meat, milk, grain, and
vegetables to other republics,” notes ABO, a website covering
energy resources. “Likewise, its diversified heavy industry supplied the unique
equipment (for example, large diameter pipes) and raw materials to industrial
and mining sites (vertical drilling apparatus) in other regions of the former
USSR.”

After breaking away from the Soviet
Union and declaring independence, it was thought the country would “liberalize”
its industry and resources, in other words open them up for privatization by
transnational corporations and [Rothschild] international banks, but this did
not happen quickly enough for the financiers and the corporatists.

“The drop in steel prices and
Ukraine’s exposure to the global financial crisis due to aggressive foreign
borrowing lowered growth in 2008 and the economy contracted more than 15 percent
in 2009, among the worst economic performances in the world,” ABO explains. “In
August 2010, Ukraine, under the Yanukovych Administration, reached a new
agreement with the IMF for a $15.1 billion Stand-By Agreement. Economic growth
resumed in 2010 and 2011, buoyed by exports. After initial disbursements, the
IMF program stalled in early 2011 due to the Ukrainian Government’s lack of
progress in implementing key gas sector reforms, namely gas tariff increases.
Economic growth slowed in the second half of 2012 with Ukraine finishing the
year in technical recession following two consecutive quarters of negative
growth.” [Sound familiar?]

Now that Yanukovych is out of the
picture, the bankster minion Yats is lording over the Parliament, and thuggish
fascists control the streets and guard against a counter revolution that might
threaten Wall Street’s coup, the coast is clear for the IMF to pick up where it
left off. Ukraine, now one of the poorest countries in Europe thanks to a
kleptocracy supported by Washington and Wall Street, is wide open for further
looting. [Putin will decide this matter with the distinct
possibility of another Rothschild Moneychanger-demanded war breaking
out!]

'The Paragraph Began to Self-Delete': Did NSA Hack Snowden Biographer's Computer?Guardian journalist Luke Harding says paragraphs of his writing mysteriously disappeared while working on his latest book 'The Snowden Files.'

February 24, 2014 |

Is the National Security Agency breaking into computers and tampering with unpublished manuscripts?Award-winning Guardian journalist Luke Harding says paragraphs of his writing mysteriously disappeared when he was working on his latest book, "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man.""I wrote that Snowden’s revelations had damaged U.S. tech companies and their bottom line. Something odd happened," wrote Harding in The Guardian. "The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish."Harding joins us to talk about the computer monitoring and other times he believes he was being tracked.TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

Amy Goodman: We turn now to the latest on the growing surveillance state.

Edward Snowden: [Recently, we learned that our governments], “working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem, because privacy matters.”

AG: Those are the words of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, speaking in December.We turn now to the remarkable story of British journalist Luke Harding, who says he became the target of surveillance himself while reporting on Edward Snowden.Harding recently published "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man." On Friday, he revealed that while he was writing the book on his computer, paragraphs of the book would begin to self-delete.He repeatedly saw the cursor move rapidly from the left, gobbling text. And that wasn’t the only time he felt he was being monitored. Luke Harding joins us now via Democracy Now! video stream from The Guardian newsroom in London.Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Luke. Tell us what happened.Luke Harding: Well, before I do that, I think you have to understand the context, which is that the first few months of last year after Snowden’s leaks, both the U.S. and the British governments were scrambling to find out what he’d taken, how much he’d taken, why he’d taken it, and were really kind of clueless. And so, I think in that context it’s hardly surprising that the small number of journalists who were working on this material, including me, would have been targeted.What happened was that I was writing my book. I was about halfway through. I had been to see Glenn Greenwald in Rio, in Brazil, to interview him, which was a kind of curious experience because Glenn is clearly very heavily surveilled by, I think, all sorts of people. Back at my home in the English countryside, I was writing kind of rather disparagingly, rather critically, about the NSA and its — the damage these revelations had done to Silicon Valley. And I was sitting back, working offline, I have to say, and, as you say, the text began rapidly deleting. And I thought, "Oh, my goodness! What is going on here?" This happened four or five times over a period of a month, to the point where I was actually, almost kind of jokingly, leaving little notes every morning to this kind of mysterious reader. And then, at one point, one of my colleagues mentioned this in a newspaper interview in Germany, and it suddenly stopped. So, I wrote this piece not because this was an especially sinister experience, but merely to kind of lay out the facts in what was another curious episode in an already quite surreal tale.AG: Luke, you describe in your most recent piece about an American who approached you when you were in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.LH: Well, that’s right. I mean, again, I said this — you know, I mean, it was quite funny, in a way. Essentially, what happened was that I met Glenn at a hotel by the seafront, and we had to shift locations several times because it was clear that there were various people who were trying to eavesdrop on our conversation, and we ended up in the business suite where we could actually physically lock the door behind ourselves. Subsequently, at my hotel, the Marriott, the next day, I was kind of accosted in the lobby by someone who looked as if they were straight out of CIA central casting, with a kind of military haircut and neatly ironed khaki shorts. And basically, he wanted to become my friend. He wanted to take me sightseeing. And it was a curious incident. I mean, you know, I say in my piece that he may have been a tourist, because of course there’s an innocent explanation for all of these things. But having talked to Glenn, one of the things he taught me was that the CIA in Rio especially was very aggressive. Glenn’s own computer had been stolen from the home where he shared with David Miranda just a few weeks previously. And it’s clear that there was a lot of U.S. intelligence activity going on there.AG: Remind us, Luke Harding, about the day the GCHQ came to call on The Guardian.LH: Yeah, it was really, I think, one of the bizarrest episodes in the history of journalism. Essentially, the British government was extremely unhappy about our ongoing publication, from June the 5th onwards, of Snowden’s files, of the prison revelations, of Verizon and so on. And we came under increasing pressure, private pressure, backdoor pressure, from David Cameron, the British prime minister, who sent his most senior official, a guy called Sir Jeremy Heywood, to come and see us and basically say, "We can do this nicely, or we can go to law." In other words, he wanted this material back, and if we didn’t give it back, we were going to be injuncted. In other words, police would seize our computers and kind of shut down our reporting operation. And we explained that this was pointless, because Glenn had this stuff in Brazil; Laura Poitras, the filmmaker, had Snowden material in Berlin; The Washington Post similarly.But the British government wasn’t listening, and this culminated in a hot Saturday morning last summer with three of my colleagues being forced to smash up our computers in the underground car park, four floors down from where I’m talking to you, watched by two spies from the British spy agency, GCHQ, who took photos on their iPhones to record the event, brought along a special machine called a degausser, which looks like a microwave oven. So we had to post the pieces of our bashed-up MacBooks into this degausser, which demagnetized them. And then these spies, who are based in the English countryside in a small provincial town called Cheltenham, they don’t get to London very often, the big city, and they left carrying bags of shopping, presents for their families. It really was a bizarre thing and, I think, for anyone who cares about press freedom, a pretty chilling thing, too.AG: While you were doing the work, while The Guardian was, and Glenn Greenwald was working for The Guardian, putting out the original pieces based on what Edward Snowden released from the National Security Agency, you write about how you were a part of this small team holed up in a room at The Guardian. Describe the security you had, and even your computers not being linked to the Internet.LH: Yeah, it’s actually one floor up from here, so the computer smashing happened three floors down. The secret bunker is upstairs. And we knew that this was a serious — you know, the material that Snowden had entrusted to us, that this was a very serious undertaking. And we had a clear mission from him, which was to not publish anything which would damage legitimate intelligence operations, but to reveal mass surveillance, which we now all know about. And so, there were seven or eight of us, never any more than that, working in the room. We had security guards, around the clock, 24 hours, making sure that nobody who shouldn’t have been there was there. We left all electronics out. And we had four laptops and a PC, which had never been connected to the Internet, which were brand new, air-gapped at all times. We papered over the windows so nobody could see in from outside. And we — actually, to be honest, we were also kind of working against the clock. There was a sense that we needed to get as many stories out as we could, and in a responsible way, because we didn’t know when the British government would fall on us. And one other quite nice detail, cleaners were banned. Nobody was inside that room. So, very quickly, you know, I write in my book, it sort of resembled a kind of student dormitory with pizza wrappers, dirty coffee cups. So it was a pretty insalubrious working environment.AG: Has the GCHQ, the Government Communications Headquarters, the equivalent of the NSA, and the NSA changed their practices in any way in this eight months since all of this information has begun to come out?LH: Well, you would think the answer to that question, Amy, would be yes, but in reality the answer is no. And I find it very depressing. I mean, it’s been fascinating. You know, I’ve been to the U.S. several times researching the book, and there’s clearly a very lively debate, a polarized debate, going on. But what’s happening politically is very interesting. In Britain, for certainly the first four or five months, the entire political establishment was asleep, and it’s only really woken up, I’d say, in the last few months. And the message from David Cameron, the prime minister, has been, really, "Move along, nothing to see here." But I think, inevitably, one of the things you know when you look at these documents is that GCHQ and the NSA work so closely together. This becomes very clear. They’re practically one entity. So I think the reforms or "reforms" that Obama announced in January, on January 17th, will inevitably affect the work of GCHQ, as well.AG: And what do you think of President Obama’s so-called "reforms"?LH: Well, I mean, I think reform is rather a grand word. It seems to me they’re more face-saving tweaks, actually. I mean, the big takeaway is that the NSA will no longer listen to Angela Merkel’s cellphone or that of other "friendly" leaders. But I’ve just been in Europe doing various literary events there, and people are scratching their heads wondering whether their prime ministers, you know, are sufficiently friendly to — whether that means they will be bugged or not. They simply don’t know. And on the big thing, which is of course the collection of American metadata, telephony data, you know, tell me if I’m wrong, but that’s carrying on. OK, it may be administered by some new entity, but those programs, which Ed Snowden very bravely exposed, are still continuing.AG: And we just have 30 seconds. Google, Microsoft, have they changed their ways of operating at all as a result of all that has come out, and the other big companies?LH: Well, I mean, I haven’t — I haven’t noticed major changes. I have noticed absolute panic and a really massive kind of PR campaign to try and assure everybody, from us — senior Google executives recently visited The Guardian — to the whole world, that they are not kind of complicit in this spying, and have been coerced into collaborating. But I still think there are some kind of big questions about how deep their involvement in all of this is.AG: Luke Harding, I want to thank you for being with us, award-winning foreign correspondent with The Guardian. His new book, just out, "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man." He also recently wrote a piece in The Guardian called "Writing The Snowden Files: 'The Paragraph Began to Self-Delete.'"

Amy Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller

22 Economics EIR February 21, 2014‘To Protect Its People’Indonesia Says NoTo Free Marketby Ron CastonguayFeb. 13—An important law just passed by the IndonesianParliament curtails the rights of the market to controlthe destiny of the Indonesian people, apparentlyanticipating a need for emergency economic measures.Article 54 of the new trade law allows the governmentto restrict exports of commodities to anticipate “quitedrastic” price increases in global markets or to ensuredomestic supply. It also allows for import restrictions todevelop or protect certain industries and to safeguardthe country’s balance of payments.The law, approved at a plenary session of parliamenton Feb. 11, may limit exports or imports of staplecommodities to ensure local demand is met. The newlaw highlights Indonesia’s push to limit commodity exportsand food imports to develop local production andboost manufacturing capabilities in the country, as thegovernment seeks to reduce the economy’s dependenceon overseas shipments for growth.Indonesia is not shy about its rights to violate thedogma of “free trade” to protect higher, and more valid,values. “This law underlines Indonesia’s stance of notadopting a free market,” Deputy Trade Minister BayuKrisnamurthi said after the bill was passed. “The governmenthas been given the right to intervene to protectits people.”Aiming for Food Self-SufficiencyThe goal of the new provisions is not just short term.Indonesia, with its heritage of Portuguese, English, andDutch colonialism, is determined to reject that status,develop itself, and fully exist as a sovereign nation.“We can’t rely on coal and palm oil anymore,” saidJuniman, a Jakarta-based economist at PT Bank InternasionalIndonesia. “If all our raw materials are exported,manufacturers won’t be able to grow and it’ll bedifficult for us to avoid getting stuck in the middle-incometrap.”Indonesia has 237 million people on its 17,000islands. Its demands and its actions to establish itssovereignty are more important than may at first beapparent. It is not just other minor undeveloped country.Only China, India, and the United States have agreater population than Indonesia, and there is no countrywith a larger Muslin population. While the poison ofSaudi-backed fundamentalism has touched Indonesia,Islam is by-and-large moderate there, and the government,based on a expressly secular model, is relativelystable. Its actions are watched and noted throughout theworld.Ever since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, whichdeeply affected the country’s economy, Indonesia hasbeen attempting to reform its agricultural sector. It hasput in place a large number of reforms with the objectivesof achieving food security through increased productionof rice, sugar, soybeans, maize, and beef; ensuringthat prices are affordable for consumers;diversifying production away from carbohydrates toanimal-based products; raising the level of competitivenessfor agricultural products; and improving thelot of farmers.A new Food Law, signed by President Susilo BambangYudhoyono in November 2012, was intended toinstitutionalize self-sufficiency in food production, and“food sovereignty” as overarching food security policies,according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’sForeign Agricultural Service. Among its provisions,Article 14 states that “Sources of food supply are fromdomestic production and national food reserves. In thecase of shortage of food supply from those two sources,food can be fulfilled by importation, as needed.” Inother words, Indonesia should depend on itself for itsfood, only relying on the international market in case ofneed.Another provision, Article 24, limits the export offood, saying exports “can be carried out by taking intoaccount the needs of domestic food consumption andnational interest. The export of staple food can only becarried out after the fulfillment of domestic consumptionand national food reserves.”Not all the goals of the Food Law have been realized.While there was opposition to the law from theinternational food cartels, Indonesia has been self-sufficientenough in food to be shielded from cartel retribution.The exception is Indonesia’s production andexport of edible palm oil in the international arena—which has been under continued Greenie attack, mostFebruary 21, 2014 EIR Economics 23especially European, on a variety of so-called healthand environmental grounds.However, the implementation of the law has encounterednumerous problems, including an Australianembargo on live cow exports because of Indonesian“cruelty” in slaughtering, profiteering in certain commodities,and widespread corruption problems that leadto a black market in foodstuff import certificates.Fight with the Mineral CartelsIndonesia’s fight to escape being merely a raw materialsexporter is also proceeding in the area of minerals.Indonesia is the world’s biggest exporter of thermalcoal, tin, and nickel ore, and a major supplier of copper,aluminum, and gold ores. Minerals and related productshave in the past accounted for up to 20% of its exports.Copper brought in $7.2 billion in annual receiptsin 2011, followed by nickel ($3.1 billion), tin ($2.4 billion),and bauxite ($1.1 billion).But, by and large, Indonesian mining is a collectionof holes in the ground and short-haul railroads. Little tonone of the processing of ores, or refining, smelting,and fabricating the finished metal into semi-finishedgoods, or final product is done in Indonesia, leaving thecountry dependent on the mineral cartels.When, in 2009, Indonesiaannounced a law tochange that, by requiringmining companies to atleast do the initial processingof ores in the country,beginning in 2014, the internationalcartels let out ahowl and produced aruckus that still continues.Rather than investing in Indonesiaby building smeltersand other associatedprocessing facilities, theinternational cartels begana campaign of press vilification,legal actions, andstubborn refusal to acceptthe will of the Indonesiangovernment and people.With few exceptions, themining companies declaredthey would not prepare tocarry out the law, but would just cease production inIndonesia.On the eve of the law’s implementation in January,the government let the mining law go into effect, withthe provision that unrefined ores would be subject to anexport tax. Indonesia’s exports of mineral ore are nowat a standstill, with unprocessed bauxite and nickel thetarget of an outright ban (for technical reasons involvedthe refining process), and mining companies either refusingor unable to pay the heavy new export duty oncopper and the other concentrates that were given an11th-hour three-year extension, according to a report inAsia Sentinel.So far, there have been no requests for export licenses,as an effective boycott appears to have been imposedby London. And, so with out-of-country stockpilesand the overall weakened state of the world’seconomies, the mining cartels may be able to continuetheir anti-Indonesia stance for some time.But the very success of the mining cartels’ boycottof Indonesian minerals ultimately reduces the viabilityof those cartels. After all, the ultimate industrial consumerof Indonesia’s minerals is China, which wantslong-term supply under stable conditions. If the cartelscannot or will not supply that, why not just eliminatethe middle-man?Creative Commons/Alexis GravelIndonesia has put in place a large number of reforms to achieve food security through increasedproduction of rice, sugar, soybeans, maize, and beef. Here, terraced agriculture in Indonesia.

12 Signs That Russia Is Ready To Fight A War Over Crimea

By Michael Snyder, on February 27th, 2014

Russia will never, ever give up Crimea without a fight. Anyone that thinks otherwise is just being delusional. The Russian
Black Sea fleet's main base at Sevastopol is far too strategically
important. In addition, ethnic Russians make up approximately 60
percent of the population of Crimea, and most of the population is
rabidly pro-Russian. In fact, many prominent Crimean politicians are
already calling for reunification with Russia. So if you have been
thinking that Russia is just going to fold up shop and go home now that
pro-European protesters have violently seized power in Kiev, you can
quit holding your breath. The truth is that Russia is more than willing
to fight a war over Crimea. And considering the fact that vitally
important pipelines that pump natural gas from Russia to the rest of
Europe go right through Ukraine, it is not likely that Russia will just
willingly hand the rest of Ukraine over to the U.S. and the EU either.
If the U.S. and the EU push too hard in Ukraine, a major regional war
may erupt which could ultimately lead to something much larger.

Russia and Ukraine have very deep historical ties. Most Americans
may not think that Ukraine is very important, but the Russians consider
Ukraine to be of the utmost strategic importance.
As an American, how would you feel if another nation funded and
organized the violent overthrow of the democratically-elected Canadian
government and replaced it with a government that was virulently
anti-American?
By doing this to Ukraine, the United States and the EU are
essentially sticking a pin in Russia's eye. Needless to say, Russia is
extremely angry at this point and they are gearing up for war.
The following are 12 signs that Russia is ready to fight a war over Crimea...#1 More Russian military vehicles continue to pour into Crimea. Just check out this video.#2 Russian military vehicles have been photographed in the main square of Sevastopol.#3 Russian military jets near the border with Ukraine have been put on combat alert.#4 Russia has ordered "surprise military exercises" along the Ukrainian border.#5 In connection with those "exercises", it is being reported that Russia has deployed 150,000 troops along the border with Ukraine.#6 Russia already has approximately 26,000 troops stationed at their naval base in Sevastopol.#7 Russian ships carrying additional soldiers have been spotted off the coast of Crimea...

Russia’s large landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov has
arrived near the Russia Black Sea Fleet’s base at Sevastopol, which
Russia has leased from Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union in
1991.
The ship is reported to be carrying as many as 200 soldiers and has
joined four additional ships carrying an unknown amount of Special
Forces troops. Flot.com also reported over the weekend that personnel
from the 45th Airborne Special Forces unit and additional divisions had
been airlifted into Anapa, a city on Russia’s Black Sea coastline.

Moscow earlier revealed that it would be ready to go for
war over the Crimea region in order to protect the large population and
army installations.
“If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war. They will lose
Crimea first [because] we will go in and protect [it], just as we did in
Georgia,” an unidentified Russian official told the Financial Times.

Viktor F. Yanukovych, the ousted president of Ukraine,
declared on Thursday that he remained the lawful president of the
country and appealed to Russia to “secure my personal safety from the
actions of extremists.” Russian news agencies reported that he had
already arrived in Russia, but officials did not immediately confirm
that.

No matter what the "new government" in Kiev says, and no matter how
hard the U.S. and the EU push, Russia will never give up Crimea. The
following is what a recent Debka article had to say about the matter...

There is no way that President Vladimir Putin will
relinquish Russian control of the Crimean peninsula and its military
bases there - or more particularly the big Black Sea naval base at
Sevastopol. This military stronghold is the key to Russia’s Middle East
policy. If it is imperiled, so too are Russia’s military posture in
Syria and its strategic understandings with Iran.

And you know what?
The people of Crimea do not want Russia to leave either. In fact,
they overwhelmingly want Russia to help defend them against the "new
government" in Kiev.
As you read this, militia groups are being formed in Crimea to fight
back against the "nationalist invasion" that they are anticipating.
Just check out the following excerpt from a recent Time Magazine article...

Many of the people at the rally in Sevastopol were not just ready to believe. They were convinced of the imminent nationalist invasion. What scared them most were the right-wing
political parties and militant groups that have played a role in
Ukraine’s revolution. “What do you think they’re going to do with all
those weapons they seized from police in Kiev? They’re going to come here and make war,”
said Sergei Bochenko, who identified himself as the commander of a
local militia group in Sevastopol called the Southern Russian Cossack
Battalion.
In preparation, he said, his group of several hundred men had armed
themselves with assault rifles and begun to train for battle. “There’s not a chance in hell
we’re going to accept the rule of that fascist scum running around in
Kiev with swastikas,” he said. That may be overstating the case. Nowhere
in Ukraine has the uprising involved neo-Nazi groups, and no swastikas
have appeared on the revolution’s insignia. But every one of the dozen
or so people TIME spoke to in Sevastopol was certain that the revolt was
run by fascists, most likely on the payroll of the U.S. State
Department.

And just remember what happened back in 2008 in South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. The Russians have already shown that they are not afraid to
militarily intervene in order to protect Russian citizens.
So what would the U.S. and the EU do if a war erupts between Russia and Ukraine?
Would they risk a direct military confrontation with Russia in order to help Ukraine?
I am very concerned about where all of this could be heading.
What about you?
What do you think?

The earth is literally shaking as earthquakes are dramatically increasing across the globe.

But it’s not just the earth that is rumbling; nations are increasingly experiencing the writhing discomfort of political upheaval and the common denominator is—food.

The complex system of the global food supply is the key that opens the exits as well as the entrance doors for political regimes around the world.

Food shortages spark the fires of protest such the one that resulted in the ouster of Tunisia’s President, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and eventually spread like wildfire to Egypt, Libya and Yemen in 2011, and now seem to be engulfing a new list of nations that were predicted by complex systems theorist, Yaneer Bar-Yam of New England Complex Systems Institute, as vulnerable to revolution due to rising food prices.

Brian Merchant reported that Bar-Yam charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.”

Bar-Yam’s list of nations deemed destined to riots and unrest due to food shortages were

We have already seen the Arab Spring countries experience riot and overthrow, but now we see mounting turmoil in the other nations on the list.

“There are certainly many other factors fueling mass protests, but hunger---or the desperation caused by its looming specter—is often the tipping point. …Venezuela—where students have taken to the streets and protests have left citizens dead—food prices at a staggering 18-year high,” says Merchant.

But it’s not just food shortages that promote unrest.

Factors which affect food at its source serve as a volatile contender in the ring of political jousting.

In Thailand, amid anti-government protests, the lamenting voice of the farmer can be heard. According to Orthai Sriring and Amy Sawitta Lefevre, “…the Election Commission approved a 712 million Baht ($21.87 million) fund to be drawn from the central budget for rice farmers, many of whom have been waiting for payment and some of whom have committed suicide in desperation.”

“But the sum is a small fraction of the estimated 130 billion baht her [Prime Minister Yingluch Shinawatra] government needs to pay to nearly a million farmers.”

“If we don’t get our money this week, we’ll return to remind the prime minister about it,” said one of the farmers’ leaders after they protested outside an air force base where Yingluck was holding a cabinet meeting.

Americans are used to hearing about food shortages abroad, but what about here, at home?

The following excerpt from a recent Prophecy News Watch article gives a glimpsing view of upcoming trouble.

“The state of California, which produces the most vegetables in the U.S, is going through its worst drought ever, with 91.6% of the state experiencing severe to exceptional drought. 2013 was its worst year ever and there has been no improvement so far in 2014. According to CNBC, it is being projected that California farmers are going to let half a million acres of farmland sit idle this year because of the crippling drought. Much of the western U.S. has been exceedingly dry for an extended period of time, and this is hurting huge numbers of farmers and ranchers all the way from Texas to the west coast.” Read more here

Food production woes coupled with the American farmers’ tremendous dependence on farm subsidies paid at “around $20 billion per year,” according to Wikipedia, from a budget of which is projected to be deficient of $514 billion in fiscal year 2014, the curious question has to be asked, “How long can Americans expect the fuel to remain protected from the spark?”

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/February28/281.html#riecPfwXBfElK8E7.99

Are the lights that illumine your room or current location, doing more than just providing light? Could it be that the lights are also watching you? It would seem that LED light fixtures are now emerging as the latest tools in spying and investigation.

Judy Molland, in a recent article for care2.com describes the light-emitting diode (LED) as ‘one of today’s most energy-efficient and rapidly-developing lighting technologies. Quality LED light bulbs last longer, are more durable, and offer comparable or better light quality than other types of lighting.

LED is a highly energy efficient lighting technology and has the potential to fundamentally change the future of lighting in the United States. Residential LEDs, especially ENERGY STAR rated products, use at least 75 percent less energy and last 25 times longer than incandescent lighting.’

Judy also makes reference to a New York Times report that states that ‘the clean, bright light of newly installed LED fixtures illuminating Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport, in New Jersey, are part of a new wireless network that’s watching visitors.

The 171 LED fixtures are apparently the backbone of a system that feeds data into software that can spot long lines, read license plates, identify suspicious activity and alert the appropriate staff…Now, these amazing lights are also being used to track passengers at Newark Liberty International Airport.

The New York Times reports that the new light fixtures are part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff.

The project is still in its early stages, but executives with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, are already talking about expanding it to other terminals and buildings.’

The sensors in the lights were reportedly designed by Sensity Systems.

Not surprisingly, the fine battle lines between security requirements and privacy needs are again being redrawn between security enforcement agents and privacy/data security advocates.

Judy cites prior privacy invasion examples such as reports of rubbish bins in London being set to snoop on innocent citizens, and police officers in California wanting to tap into property owners’ private security cameras. Future plans include a street lighting system in Las Vegas that could also be used to issue security alerts at a pedestrian mall.

Judy expounds: “Privacy advocates point out that the installation of these security systems raises the specter of technology racing ahead of the ability to harness it, running risks of invading privacy and mismanaging information, (while) others argue that we should have no expectation of privacy when we go to an airport, other than the restroom. They add that if you don’t want to be observed, you shouldn’t go to an airport; after all, it wasn’t so long ago that planes were used as weapons.”

And these lights are by no means limited to surveillance – apparently they are also now being used to provide useful business marketing information. Writing for popsci.com, Francis Diep explains: “Electronics company Philips is piloting a system in which LED store lamps track shoppers... Shoppers have to download the store's app, first.

Once they do, every lamp in the store is able to communicate with the shoppers' phones using pulses of light the human eye can't detect. Thus, the lamps know whether someone is in the produce section or the peanut butter aisle… and in response, the app can call up killer deals on bananas or jelly, depending.

Philips is testing the system in Europe, but hasn't confirmed which stores will have it, Wired UK reports. This lamp-based customer-tracking scheme is part of an overall drive among companies to come up with ways to track people's shopping habits in stores…Data on where people walk and pause in stores are valuable to the stores, of course. In return, stores offer shoppers targeted coupons.

The Philips app even suggests recipes and a walking route through the store, based on which ingredients users want to buy... In addition, lights are everywhere, as Philips business development manager Gerben van der Lugt explained in a statement about Philips' supermarket tracking.

"The beauty of the system is that retailers do not have to invest in additional infrastructure to house, power and support location beacons for indoor positioning," he said. "The light fixtures themselves can communicate this information by virtue of their presence everywhere in the store."”

It would seem that using supermarket lights to acquire marketing intelligence and to provide a better customer experience may not generate as much controversy as the usage for security surveillance would.

However the question remains: “Are these surveillance equipments excessive and crossing into invasions of privacy? Or are they necessary to keep us all as safe as possible? Are they being used in ways that intrude on privacy unnecessarily?

How safe are these records and do we have any comfort that the information collected will not be used to harm or compromise the privacy of innocent people? Should we be staring nervously at the lights in airport bathrooms or hotel rooms, not knowing how far the snooping can go and where it will stop, all in the name of crime detection and prevention?

Even in the aftermath of the Snowden/NSA revelations it would seem that there still isn’t much by way of assurances to the general public from the authorities, that would inspire high levels of confidence or trust.

Lisa Vaas, writing for nakedsecurity.sophos.com exemplifies in her recent comment the primary privacy and data security concerns: “Sensity, to its credit, has acknowledged the concerns of privacy advocates who say that the tendency is to suck up as much big data as possible first and then worry about securing it later.

The company has gone so far as to create a board to help figure out the technology's implications. The data, in the meantime, is encrypted (though we have no more detail than that) and "supersecure", chief executive Hugh Martin told the NYT. But it's perhaps best to be skeptical of claims that data is secure, let alone "supersecure".

We just marked the end of an epic year for data breaches, with over 800 million records lost. It would be wonderful to believe in the claims that data being rolled up by places like this airport are going to be secure and that nobody's going to get at it without a subpoena or written request.

But there's hope, and then there's reality. Eight hundred million lost records. Goodness gracious, that's a lot of not-so-super security.”

Meanwhile, the lights keep watching.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/February28/285.html#SBlVtoaepEbP5IyL.99

Are
the lights that illumine your room or current location, doing more than
just providing light? Could it be that the lights are also watching
you? It would seem that LED light fixtures are now emerging as the
latest tools in spying and investigation.

Judy Molland, in a recent article for care2.com
describes the light-emitting diode (LED) as ‘one of today’s most
energy-efficient and rapidly-developing lighting technologies. Quality
LED light bulbs last longer, are more durable, and offer comparable or
better light quality than other types of lighting.
LED is a highly energy efficient lighting technology and has the
potential to fundamentally change the future of lighting in the United
States. Residential LEDs, especially ENERGY STAR rated products, use at
least 75 percent less energy and last 25 times longer than incandescent
lighting.’

Judy also makes reference to a New York Times report that states
that ‘the clean, bright light of newly installed LED fixtures
illuminating Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport, in New
Jersey, are part of a new wireless network that’s watching visitors.
The 171 LED fixtures are apparently the backbone of a system that feeds
data into software that can spot long lines, read license plates,
identify suspicious activity and alert the appropriate staff…Now, these
amazing lights are also being used to track passengers at
Newark
Liberty International Airport.
The New York Times reports that the new light fixtures are part of a
new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can
spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious
activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff.The
project is still in its early stages, but executives with the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, are
already talking about expanding it to other terminals and buildings.’

The sensors in the lights were reportedly designed by Sensity Systems.

Not surprisingly, the fine battle lines between security
requirements and privacy needs are again being redrawn between security
enforcement agents and privacy/data security advocates.
Judy cites prior privacy invasion examples such as reports of rubbish
bins in London being set to snoop on innocent citizens, and police
officers in California wanting to tap into property owners’ private
security cameras. Future plans include a street lighting system in Las
Vegas that could also be used to issue security alerts at a pedestrian
mall.

Judy expounds: “Privacy advocates point out that the installation
of these security systems raises the specter of technology racing ahead
of the ability to harness it, running risks of invading privacy and
mismanaging information, (while) others argue that we should have no
expectation of privacy when we go to an airport, other than the
restroom. They add that if you don’t want to be observed, you shouldn’t
go to an airport; after all, it wasn’t so long ago that planes were used
as weapons.”

And these lights are by no means limited to surveillance –
apparently they are also now being used to provide useful business
marketing information. Writing for
popsci.com,
Francis Diep explains: “Electronics company Philips is piloting a
system in which LED store lamps track shoppers... Shoppers have to
download the store's app, first.
Once they do, every lamp in the store is able to communicate with the
shoppers' phones using pulses of light the human eye can't detect. Thus,
the lamps know whether someone is in the produce section or the peanut
butter aisle… and in response, the app can call up killer deals on
bananas or jelly, depending.
Philips is testing the system in Europe, but hasn't confirmed which
stores will have it, Wired UK reports. This lamp-based customer-tracking
scheme is part of an overall drive among companies to come up with ways
to track people's shopping habits in stores…Data on where people walk
and pause in stores are valuable to the stores, of course. In return,
stores offer shoppers targeted coupons.
The Philips app even suggests recipes and a walking route through the
store, based on which ingredients users want to buy... In addition,
lights are everywhere, as Philips business development manager Gerben
van der Lugt explained in a statement about Philips' supermarket
tracking. "The
beauty of the system is that retailers do not have to invest in
additional infrastructure to house, power and support location beacons
for indoor positioning," he said. "The light fixtures themselves can
communicate this information by virtue of their presence everywhere in
the store."”

It would seem that using supermarket lights to acquire marketing
intelligence and to provide a better customer experience may not
generate as much controversy as the usage for security surveillance
would.However
the question remains: “Are these surveillance equipments excessive and
crossing into invasions of privacy? Or are they necessary to keep us all
as safe as possible? Are they being used in ways that intrude on
privacy unnecessarily?
How safe are these records and do we have any comfort that the
information collected will not be used to harm or compromise the privacy
of innocent people? Should we be staring nervously at the lights in
airport bathrooms or hotel rooms, not knowing how far the snooping can
go and where it will stop, all in the name of crime detection and
prevention?

Even in the aftermath of the Snowden/NSA revelations it would seem
that there still isn’t much by way of assurances to the general public
from the authorities, that would inspire high levels of confidence or
trust.

Lisa Vaas, writing for nakedsecurity.sophos.com
exemplifies in her recent comment the primary privacy and data security
concerns: “Sensity, to its credit, has acknowledged the concerns of
privacy advocates who say that the tendency is to suck up as much big
data as possible first and then worry about securing it later.
The company has gone so far as to create a board to help figure out the
technology's implications. The data, in the meantime, is encrypted
(though we have no more detail than that) and "supersecure", chief
executive Hugh Martin told the NYT. But it's perhaps best to be
skeptical of claims that data is secure, let alone "supersecure".
We just marked the end of an epic year for data breaches, with over 800
million records lost. It would be wonderful to believe in the claims
that data being rolled up by places like this airport are going to be
secure and that nobody's going to get at it without a subpoena or
written request.
But there's hope, and then there's reality. Eight hundred million lost
records. Goodness gracious, that's a lot of not-so-super security.”

About Me

ROLAND SAN JUAN was a researcher, management consultant, inventor, a part time radio broadcaster and a publishing director. He died last November 25, 2008 after suffering a stroke. His staff will continue his unfinished work to inform the world of the untold truths. Please read Erick San Juan's articles at: ericksanjuan.blogspot.com This blog is dedicated to the late Max Soliven, a FILIPINO PATRIOT.
DISCLAIMER - We do not own or claim any rights to the articles presented in this blog. They are for information and reference only for whatever it's worth. They are copyrighted to their rightful owners.
************************************
Please listen in to Erick San Juan's daily radio program which is aired through DWSS 1494khz AM @ 5:30pm, Mondays through Fridays, R.P. time, with broadcast title, “WHISTLEBLOWER” the broadcast tackle current issues, breaking news, commentaries and analyses of various events of political and social significance.
***************************************
LIVE STREAMING
http://www.dwss-am1494khz.blogspot.com